It’s not the worst thing, really, to be an obscure bachelor and lead an invisible life; now someone, never mind who, has found him out, and sent him those two strange balls.

He tries to grab one of them, but they retreat from him, drawing him further into the room. ‘How undignified,’ he thinks, ‘to be chasing after a couple of balls,’ but then he stops and watches as, once his pursuit has slackened off, they stay in the same place. ‘I will try and catch them anyway,’ he thinks, and sets off after them. They straightaway flee, but a splay-footed Blumfeld shepherds them into a corner of the room, and in front of a trunk that’s standing there, he manages to catch one of the balls. The ball is small and cool to the touch, and spins in his hand, evidently trying to escape. And the other ball too, as though seeing the predicament of its fellow, starts jumping higher than before and jumps so high that it strikes Blumfeld’s hand. It strikes the hand, jumping up rapidly, changes its line of attack, then, unable to do anything to the hand that’s enclosing the ball, it jumps higher still, probably in an effort to reach Blumfeld’s face. Blumfeld could catch this ball too, and lock them both away, but just at that moment it strikes him as undignified to take such measures against two little balls. It’s fun too, isn’t it, to own two little balls; they’ll tire soon enough, roll under a cupboard somewhere, and keep shtum. In spite of his thought, Blumfeld, in an access of something like rage, flings the ball to the ground; it’s a wonder the thin, almost transparent veneer of celluloid doesn’t shatter. Without a second’s pause, the two balls resume their previous pattern of low, alternating bounces.

Blumfeld calmly gets undressed, tidies his clothes away in the wardrobe – he usually likes to check the cleaner has left everything there in good order. Once or twice he looks over his shoulder at the balls – since he has given up pursuing them, they seem to be following him – they have moved closer and are bouncing just behind him. Blumfeld pulls on his dressing gown, and then crosses the room to fetch a pipe from the rack there. Involuntarily, before turning round, he kicks out a heel, but the balls succeed in staying out of the way and are not struck. As he goes for his pipe now, the balls join him right away. He shuffles along in his slippers, taking irregular steps, but almost without a break the balls follow him step by step. Blumfeld turns round suddenly – he wants to see how the balls cope with that. But no sooner has he turned than the balls move through a semicircle, and are once again behind him; this happens each time he turns. Like junior members of a retinue, they seek to avoid parading in front of Blumfeld. Thus far, the only reason they did so was to introduce themselves to him, but now they have entered his service.

Up to this point, Blumfeld’s recourse on finding himself in exceptional situations that could not be mastered by sheer strength was to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Often it helped; at least it improved his position. This is what he does again now, standing with a thoughtful pout in front of his pipe-rack, selecting a pipe, filling it with unusual thoroughness from the tobacco pouch also there, and just letting the balls bounce away to their hearts’ content behind him. Only he is reluctant to go to the table, he feels something akin to pain at the thought of their bouncing in time to his footfall. So he stands there, spending an unnecessarily long time filling his pipe, and gauging the distance between his position and the table. At last, he overcomes his weakness and covers the distance with such loud stamps of his feet that he doesn’t even hear the balls. When he is sitting down, admittedly, there they are, bouncing behind his armchair just as audibly as before.

Within reach across the table by the wall is a shelf where the bottle of cherry brandy is kept, ringed by little glasses. Next to it is the stack of French periodicals. But instead of getting everything he needs, Blumfeld sits there quite still and stares into his unlit pipe bowl. He is on the alert, very abruptly his rigidity vanishes, and with a jerk he turns around in the armchair. But the balls are every bit as alert.